Learn this skill to unlock opportunities.

Business development is not just sales.

It is the ability to create opportunity.

To start conversations.

Read people.

Build trust.

Negotiate.

Handle rejection.

Stay composed when things go quiet.

And move first when everyone else is waiting.

This episode brings together many of the themes from the first season. 

• Visibility.
• Confidence.
• Patience.
• Standards.
• Leverage.
• Emotional control.
• Relationships.
• Timing.

Because business development teaches you all of them.

It teaches you that the best communicators are not always the loudest.

They are the people who understand who they are speaking to.

It teaches you that silence is not always rejection.

That a no is not always permanent.

That confidence is built through action.

And that opportunities rarely arrive fully formed.

Most people wait to be noticed.

Wait to be promoted.

Wait for permission.

Wait until they feel ready.

Business development teaches you to stop waiting.

Start the conversation.

Create the opening.

Put yourself in the room.

This is not just an episode for people in sales.

It is for anyone trying to build a business, career, network, reputation, or better life.

Because once you learn how to create opportunity in business, you stop waiting for it everywhere else. 

Follow The Way I See It  for short, practical insights on hiring, leadership, and performance.
New episodes frequently. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to The Way I See It. Short thoughts on work, life, and the decisions in between and why we tend to overcomplicate all three. Straight from the front line of modern business, grab a coffee, grab a pad, and let's get into it. Welcome to another episode of The Way I See It. We are on episode 9. This episode's going to be around business development and how I firmly believe it's the life skill to unlock in opportunities. Now, I feel like business development's one of those kind of misunderstood skills. Um most people hear the words and immediately will think sales, targets, cold calls, um, LinkedIn messages, trying to convince someone ultimately to buy something they might not want or might not need. And some of it can kind of sit kind of underneath that, I suppose, but that's not really what true business development is. It's the ability to create opportunity where opportunity doesn't currently exist. And it's knowing how to start a conversation, how to build trust, how to understand what somebody values, what position can you bring to the table, how to turn a loose connection into a meaningful relationship. It's the ability to move something forward rather than waiting for somebody else to move it for you. And that's why I firmly believe that business development is not simply a commercial function. I believe it's a life skill. And over the past decade or so, it's probably shaped my life more than any qualification or job title or individual role that I've held because it's helped me kind of transition into new markets, establish myself in countries where initially I knew kind of almost nobody, build relationships across different cultures, different levels of seniority, and eventually I could, I suppose, leave employment and build up a business from kind of scratch. So that didn't just happen suddenly. I didn't wake up one morning and say, I want to build a business, I want to be an entrepreneur. It happened because over a decade I've been developing the skills required to create something before there was any real guarantee it would work. And I feel like you're always developing something right. So the phrase business development can ultimately sound corporate, but let's just strip away the business and ultimately what we're left with is development, and you are always developing something, whether it's a relationship, a reputation, career path, an idea network, you're developing a level of confidence, you're developing a future opportunity. Even when you're not consciously selling, you are showing people how you communicate, how you carry yourself, whether you can be trusted, how you respond to certain situations. And this episode ultimately brings much of the kind of first season together because we've spoken about delayed gratification, we've spoken about validation, about kind of are you in the right room, about handling rejection, continuing on through quiet periods? And business development ultimately sits at the kind of crossroads of all these kind of little offshoots, if you will, because it requires communication, it requires confidence, patience, resilience, self-awareness, and the willingness to move first. And I suppose what's business development actually done for me, right? Because it's easy for me to say that, you know, it's one of the most important skills, whether it's business or in life. But the better question, I suppose, would be what has learning and honing my business development skill set actually changed in my life? And I feel like there's multiple examples of this that are, you know, ultimately surface level. But when I moved into a new region, I can't ultimately rely on my existing reputation. People don't automatically know who you are. They don't owe me their time or have any reason to kind of trust me. And I had to learn how to enter those new environments without waiting to be invited in, which meant ultimately starting conversations, understanding the market, listening before trying to prove myself and recognising the kind of cultural differences or nuances of whichever market or whichever place I was in, and ultimately following up in the correct way without being irritating, I suppose. And when I traveled, the value was never simply just being in another country. The value came from knowing how to use that as an opportunity in terms of who should I be speaking to, what can I learn? How do I make myself memorable without ultimately forcing it? How can I turn one interaction into multiple interactions? And business developments taught me not just to visit places, but to connect with them. And when I set up the business, those same skills that I've developed over the dec the past decade ultimately became essential because we didn't launch the business with decades of company history, a huge marketing budget, a globally recognized name that's opening doors for us. We had our own experience, our own networks, our specialism, but the ability to communicate the value of what we were building and why it was important. And we ultimately had to create that and the momentum of that before the market had actually given us the permission to do so. And that's what business development's kind of done for me. It's backing yourself before there's an overwhelming external evidence that you should be backed or that you're right to be backed. And relationships are built everywhere in every kind of format. And some of the most useful relationships in my life have certainly not started in the boardroom or in business, they've started in gyms or barbershops or coffee shops or events through mutual friends or connections just during completely ordinary conversations. Now, sometimes my kind of group of friends joke that I seem to have someone for everything, and um I think it's true in some respects because I have a barber who can fit me in around the booking system. I have a designer for PR and for graphics, a photographer, someone who understands the property market, someone who has ties to a different market that I have no knowledge in, someone who can make an introduction to a country or a company or a region that I don't have any standing in. And that doesn't happen because I treat every person like a commercial opportunity, because that'd be pretty transparent from the off, right? But it happens because I have a genuine interest in people and what makes people tick. So I'll ask questions, I'll remember what people do, I recognise where someone has a knowledge of a certain thing. I I kind of look at how people move and how they interact, and when an opportunity arises, I try to connect people who could genuinely help, and whether that's helped me or help someone else. And I suppose those distinctions matter because not every relationship should be transactional, but every healthy relationship contains some form of value exchange, whether it's subconscious or not, because the value could simply be knowledge, it could be loyalty, energy, humor, perspective, support, opportunity. Your friends are not your friends because you completed a commercial assessment of them, of course. However, you invested your time, you recognized alignment, you developed trust, and that's ultimately a relationship kind of development, right? And relationship development is just at the heart of business development. And the best business developers for me are adapters. People will sometimes assume that being good at business development means being loud, being outspoken, being outgoing, comfortable in any scenario speaking to anyone. I think what's the sales phrase is be kind of like a chameleon where you can just blend in with any scenario. But I don't think that's necessarily true because I feel like the best business developers are not necessarily the biggest talkers, but they're the best adapters. They will understand that different people need or require different things. Some may want detail, some want decisiveness, some want warranth or a story, some want evidence, some need time, some appreciate directness. Now, your job is not to become a different person in every conversation, but it is to communicate your message in a way that the other person can receive. And I think that's vital because I suppose before any important conversation, just ask yourself kind of what does this person care about? What pressure might they be under? How do they prefer to be communicate? How do they prefer to communicate? Do they need confidence from me? Do they need space? Do they need me to listen? Am I speaking in a way that makes sense to them? Or does it just make sense to me? And a lot of poor communication is not caused by somebody having nothing valuable to say, it's caused by them only knowing one way to say it. And in a strange way, good business development can feel like mastering manipulation. And I I don't want that to sound kind of the negative connotation of the word manipulation, right? But it's it's about being alert to cues, to reactions, to insights, then adjusting how you commute how you communicate without losing your authenticity. Learn to read what's not being said. And in an earlier episode, I think we spoke about me personally not seeing myself as purely introverted or extroverted, because I often will step back first, I'll read the room, I'll observe how people operate, I'll I'll kind of take my time to process. And once I understand the environment, a more extroverted side can kind of come to the front. But business development certainly strengthened that ability. You learn to notice when someone is interested but cautious, enthusiastic but may not have any authority, polite, but maybe has no intention of actually moving forward, or maybe they're just testing whether you genuinely understand the subject that you're talking about. And people will often reveal themselves to you in small details. It'll be how quickly they respond, the type of questions they ask, the type of questions they avoid, how they behave when challenged, and how they treat people who can't immediately benefit from them, and ultimately whether their actions match what they're saying. And in business, that helps you qualify opportunities, but in life that helps you choose people more carefully. And one useful habit is to stop leaving conversations, only asking what did they say. Also, ask what did their behaviour tell me in that scenario, because those answers aren't always the same. And confidence will ultimately come from evidence, not performance. So business development's always taught me confidence, but not the artificial version where you enter the room and you're trying to dominate it as soon as you walk in. The the kind of real confidence or the underlying confidence comes from repetition. You know, you introduce yourself, you pitch an idea, you'll get ignored, you follow up, someone may reject you, you recover, you negotiate, you hear a no, and eventually you realise that none of those things have actually stopped you or destroyed you or you know, stopped you from moving forward. And over time you'll stop requiring every conversation to validate you. I'm not the loudest person in the room, but I know what I bring and how to communicate it correctly and eloquently. And when somebody does and recognize the value, I'm increasingly able to separate that outcome from my identity. And that connects directly with the previous episode, right? It's not personal, it's business because a rejection does not always mean you weren't good enough. Sometimes the timing's wrong, sometimes the budget wasn't there, sometimes the decision's already been made, sometimes the opportunity was never as real as it appeared to be. And your responsibility is to assess the outcome honestly, take a lesson, and then just keep moving forward. And confidence is not believing everyone will say yes, it's knowing that you'll still remain intact when somebody says no. And I suppose that brings me a little bit to negotiation because negotiation is is is key in business development, but it's also key in life, and it link really closely together because negotiation is understanding value. Any negotiation is not simply arguing over money, it's looking at the value, understanding the value, and what does the other person care about? What outcome do they need? What pressures are they under? What are they prepared to compromise on? What are you prepared to compromise on? And what happens if neither of you compromise and neither of you agree? And negotiation will appear everywhere in your life, whether it's in the kind of normal stuff where you're it's your salary or your fees or what your working conditions are, but your time, your responsibilities, your relationships, the boundaries you set, the standards you withhold. And I have friends that will ask me for advice because they're unhappy with a situation, and they know what needs to be said, but when the moment arrives, they may avoid the conversation or they've accepted the status quo. And it's not because there's a lack of intelligence or awareness, it's because they've not yet developed enough confidence to articulate themselves correctly in uncomfortable situations or conversations, and business development repeatedly forces you to practice that, and you learn that asking a question is not confrontational, challenging something is not automatically disrespect. Stating what you need doesn't make you difficult. The simple rule is don't enter a note negotiation. Only knowing what you want, understand why the other person might agree or disagree, and your argument will become much stronger when your preferred outcome connects with something that they also value. And then I suppose the next thing that's a kind of key spin-off of honing your business development skill set is resilience, right? And it's built in the silence. And business development's one of the greatest teachers of delayed gratification. A huge amount of work gives you no immediate visible reward. You may have an excellent conversation here, nothing for six months. You can build a relationship for a year before anything commercially happens. You can send the right message to the right people, but at the wrong time. So if you need constant reassurance, then BD becomes emotionally exhausting because every unanswered message will feel personal, every delay like a failure, every lost opportunity might feel like proof that you should stop, maybe. But once you learn to remain useful, consistent, composed without needing immediate return, then you develop a serious advantage. And this is where people may get the follow-up wrong because following up doesn't mean repeatedly asking, have you made a decision? A good follow-up will add value. So sharing something relevant, congratulating people on genuine development, making a useful introduction, refer back to something they've told you previously, give them a reason to remember you beyond the fact that you just want something from them, whether it's an answer or a decision or whatever it may be, because persistence without value becomes pressure. But persistence with relevance builds relationships. So I suppose stop waiting to be selected, and that's probably the biggest lesson in business development that I've taken away because most people do wait. They wait to be noticed, they wait to be promoted, they wait for a job to be advertised, they wait for market conditions to improve, they wait for someone to invite them to do something, they wait for certainty or for permission. But business development teaches you to move first to start that conversation, to approach someone, to ask the question, to make an introduction, to pitch an idea, to put yourself in a in a different room or environment. And people are often shocked how direct I can be. But sometimes you need to get to the point to understand where the opportunity exists, and if it does not exist in that moment, can you create it? Is there a way you can do that? And it's almost like chess, right? You're constantly looking ahead at the next move and the next move and the next move. And it doesn't mean acting recklessly or not acting in the moment or whatever it may be. It just means taking responsibility for creating forward movement. So when we when we established our business, we could have waited for every detail to be perfect and waited for the market to formally confirm that hey, we recognise you, there's a space for a new player in this field, but opportunities rarely arrive perfectly packaged like that. Often you have to recognise the raw ingredients and then just start building from that. And reactive people will respond to what arrives, but business developers ask, what can I create from where I'm at now? And I think that's how you develop BD as a life skill. So you don't need a sales title to practice this. But what I would employ you to do is just start by becoming better at conversating, speak to people outside of your normal circle. And again, not because you want something from them, but just because becoming comfortable with different personalities expands your world and your horizons, right? And practice asking better questions. Most people are preparing the next sentence while the other person's speaking, but just learn to listen. Because if you listen for information, you you can build upon that then, and that's where you really create value. And pay attention to what energizes people, what frustrates them, what repeatedly drills their attention, because that's where you really start to see what makes people tick, and and try to become someone who connects people. So when two individuals could genuinely benefit from knowing one another, try to make that introduction without immediately wondering what return you're gonna get, right? And learn to follow up correctly. Don't assume silence is rejection. People are busy, priorities shift, timing matters, but develop enough judgment to recognise when continued pursuit has become wasted energy. So practice asking for things like ask for a meeting, asking for feedback, ask whether there's flexibility, ask whether someone can introduce you, ask what would need to happen for the answer to be a yes. And you'll be surprised at how many opportunities never happen because simply people just don't ask the question. Um and I suppose finally practice explaining what your value is, and that doesn't mean what's your job title, what's your rehearsed elevator pitch, your actual value? Like what problem do you solve? What do people typically trust you with? What's what do you understand better than most people, whether that's a topic or an industry or a market or whatever it may be, and why should people remember you? And then when you can articulate that clearly, because Much easier to recommend, and you become much more open for connections. And some people always say to me that I'm lucky, and I always think, Well, was it luck? Because people often describe successful outcomes as luck, right? And luck does exist, timing does matter, you can meet the right person at exactly the right moment, but I struggle when you've put in years of deliberate effort towards something. I feel like that then reduces, you know, how fortunate you are because you're then literally putting yourself in a position to be fortunate, right? If I spend 10 years building relationships, learning a market, improve improving how I communicate, how I follow up, how I position myself to become a specialist, was that outcome luck? Or have I made myself more capable of receiving it? So you can't control when luck arrives, obviously, but you can control whether you're prepared for when it does. So you can place yourself in better rooms, you can develop stronger relationships, you can improve your relationships with other people, you can improve your reputation, you can become more useful, you can make yourself easier to trust or easier to work with. That will all increase the number of opportunities that have a chance to find you. So maybe luck open the door, but your development determines whether you're ready to walk through it or not. And listen, business development's not just a job function, it's a way of operating. It teaches you how to communicate, to read people, to negotiate, to handle rejection, to build trust, to remain patient and to create opportunity instead of waiting for it. And it's helped me enter unfamiliar environments and establish relationships seamlessly. It's helped me build confidence without needing to be the loudest person in the room. And it's gave me many of the tools I've eventually needed to get to the point where I am now established in a business. So when I tell people to develop their business development skills, I'm not telling everyone to become a salesperson. I'm telling you to ultimately become better at creating movement in your own lives because the people who move forward are not always the people that are the most academically gifted or have the strongest CV or the best idea or the greatest natural talent. They're often the people who just know how to start a conversation, how to build trust, how to position value and keep going when things become quiet. Ask the question and move first. And that's business development. And we can probably drop the word business altogether because it is really just development, because it's a development of your confidence, your relationships, your communication skills, your judgment, your opportunities, and ultimately your life. That's the way I see it. If it resonated, share it with someone who wants to hear it.